A strong cake and a birthday- Matcha&chocolate

I love birthdays! I always did, but for some time I have a new reason to love them: the best occasion for inventing special sweet gifts and for baking them.
Today it was my bosses birthday (he is more a friend than a boss) and of course the special cake project had to happen.
This time it was not a hard choice: a strong cake for a strong man. What could be stronger than a mix of chocolate, Matcha and Earl Grey. This combination is a knockout. I loved every minute of making it and spent quite some time just staring at it (I am not insane, or at least I don’t know I am).

For the cake layers
I doubled this recipe and baked it in 4 24 cm pans lined with parchment paper.

Bring the cream and caramels to a boil making sure the caramels melt. Add this mixture to the chopped chocolate. Let sit for a few minutes and then stir to obtain a smooth ganache. Set aside.

For the matcha mousse

I tripled the mousse and added 30 g matcha powder (you can use more or less depending on how strong you like it).

To assemble

Place one cake layer, brush with syrup, spread 1/4 of ganache and then 1/4 of the mousse. Continue with all cake layers and finish the top as every layer.

Prepare a strip of parchment paper having the length and height of your cake. Temper 200-300 g bitter sweet chocolate (you can use any temper method you are used to). Spread a thin layer of chocolate on your paper and coat the cake with it. Place in the fridge to set and then take off the paper.

For the top I used crashed macaron shells (I suffered a bit when crushing them). For chocolate macarons I replaced 15 g of powdered sugar with cocoa powder. For the matcha macarons, I added 1 tsp of matcha powder to the nut sugar mixture.